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Every once and a while we decide to totally transform MAKESHOP to meet the needs of a specific activity. For the past couple of months we had been brainstorming some way to play around with ramps and “Rube Goldberg Machines” in our space. Around the end of December we were given a donation of hundreds of cardboard tubes. We took this as a sign that we should come up with some kind of ramp activity soon. O

Over the last couple weeks, MAKESHOP began a quilting project. Everyone was invited to create a 5×5 inch square to add to our collaborative quilt. It has been a fun opportunity to learn all kinds of sewing techniques: from learning to thread a needle to operating a sewing machine. The response has been amazing; it looks like it’s going to be a big quilt! There are so many different ways to embellish each square

A couple of weeks ago we let our visitors explore ramps on a very large scale. We cleared out a large space in MAKESHOP and let adults and kids explore with cardboard tubes, tape and ping pong balls. Photos don’t really do this activity justice. Below are several videos highlighting some of the more interesting creations during our ramp experiment. This was a ramp that I assembled with the help of several kids.

Our Teaching Artists and one of our interns recently had the chance to display some original MAKESHOP creations in an art show at Tula Organic Salon and Spa here in Pittsburgh. The Salon hosts a different artist every month and allows them to display their artwork throughout the space. The MAKEHOP Art Show included a light-up jacket created by Christian as a Halloween costume/night light. Some DIY guitars (one was m

Out February 21+ MAKEnight took a timewarp to the 90s! With flannel, scrunchies, laser-cut Pogs, spin art, a piece of the Agro Crag, a nostalgia-fueled slideshow and some celebrity stop-motion animation, not to mention an amazing playlist (thanks to Alison), we celebrated our kickoff to 2014 like it was 1995. We put all those free AOL CDs to work by mounting them to motors and creating hand-held spin art spinners. Pl

Every Thursday I visit the Millvale Community Library. The space is great and I have a lot of fun helping the kids and staff learn new ways of “making.” Here is the premier of a movie trailer filmed at the Millvale Community Library. This movie trailer was made using Imovie on one of the Library’s Ipads. Enjoy. The Library is one of the five sites for our Mobile MAKESHOP program. The program en